by Jane Bradley
He heard a shout, smelled a horse. He heard a laugh, a crack rip the air. And the land snapped, burned to black.
Fat Mack stood at the end of the line, watching the men ahead filing through the door, all cuffed, heads down, docile, just the way the guards wanted. One dead man in the field was like chum in the waters. The guards would be hungry now for another shot, another chase, anything to break the monotony of day after day herding men to and from the fields. There would be a twenty-four-hour lockdown. Then back to the routine, but the talk of a man shot in the field would hang in the air like the stench of backed-up drains. Fat Mack listened to the guards just behind him, laughing at how good it had been to circle the running man, taking their time, letting him wear himself out, think he was on the brink of freedom before they took him down. He kept his eyes forward, arms loose at his sides. They’d uncuffed him for the walk back to the building. They knew it was hard for a man his size to walk with his arms cuffed. They didn’t want the work of getting him up if he fell down. Back in his cell, he’d finally have the quiet. No more of the cocky little bastard yammering on about how bad he could be. Fat Mack grinned. Couldn’t they ever learn to keep their mouths shut? Couldn’t they ever see from his stare that he just wanted them to shut up? He looked down at the dirt path. So devil boy’s blood had splattered into the dirt like any man’s. He thought, You ain’t no devil, Jesse Hollowfield. You just another dead man like anyone else.
One of the guards stepped up to walk beside him. It was the blue-eyed guard, Unger. He had little shiny blue eyes like pinpoints. He’d been the one to make the shot. Fat Mack figured if he was going to give a guard a chance to kill a man, it’d be this prick. He liked to hurt, had probably been the kind of boy who tortured bugs and drowned cats. If he weren’t a prison guard, he’d probably be out there getting in knife fights, beating up whatever got in reach, fucking up whatever he could until he ended up on the inside of a locked cell. Of all the guards, he was the one you wanted on your side. He was the one Fat Mack had offered to draw faces on the bagged flower heads for. They’d had a bond after that. He jabbed Fat Mack’s arm, grinned. “That was something, Mack.”
Fat Mack nodded at the dirt. “Felt good, huh.”
“Yeah. That wasn’t no flower head I popped back there.”
“Practice pays,” Fat Mack said.
“Damn right.” The guard walked beside him. Fat Mack knew he was aching to talk, to say something more about letting the man run in the heat, getting smacked and cut by the leaves, thinking he was running free while the whole time he was in sight. Fat Mack was puffing from the long walk in the heat. He made the sound harder than he needed to, paused a little to catch his breath, glanced up at the guard like he was really struggling. The guard stopped, motioned the other guard to go ahead. “Go on,” he said. “I’ve got Mack here. He’s cuffed. He ain’t running.”
The other guard, a pasty, dough-faced kid, spat his chew to the ground at Fat Mack’s feet. “Nah, he ain’t likely to go anywhere but the food line.”
Fat Mack gave a grin to the doughboy, who looked away. His name tag said, “Watson.” Fat Mack would remember that. He kept his eyes on the doughboy, who kept his eyes on Unger.
“You go on,” Unger said again. “We’ll take it slow. I’ll get Mack in.”
Watson gave a nod and hurried up to the rest. Fat Mack watched him run, ass already going fat. He glanced at Unger. “How long you think that little prick gonna last?”
Unger shook his head. “You tell me.”
“That ain’t for me to say,” Fat Mack said and moved on toward the building.
Unger slipped a wad of Skoal into his mouth, offered Fat Mack the can. Fat Mack shook his head, kept moving. “We got no hurry,” Unger said. “You know how that line backs up at the door. Might as well stand back here a while.” He stood there chewing and grinning. Fat Mack studied his face. A pretty-boy face, good jawline, a James Dean kind of curve to his lips, and those blue, blue eyes. Probably got every piece of ass that walked by. Especially with that cocky, king-of-the-world way he had. Girls liked those cocky kings of the world. Like Hollowfield. And now he was dead, head splattered in the dirt.
Fat Mack could see Unger was thinking about that. “So you like your job, huh?”
“Hell, yeah,” Unger said, grinning. “Days like this, like coming fifty times. That’s what it’s all about, man. You know I’ve been waiting for a runner. Told you I can shoot. Wild Bill Hickok, that’s me.”
Fat Mack nodded, thought it best not to remind Unger that Wild Bill had died after being shot in the back. He watched the line of men stalled at the door of the building. “Gonna be nice to have quiet again.”
The guard smiled. “I guess you mean it when you say you hate having a cellmate.”
“I mean everything I say,” Fat Mack said.
Unger gave him a wink. Fat Mack hated to have a man wink at him, as if they shared some little secret. Fat Mack didn’t share a goddamned thing. He just kept his eyes on the guard, watched his mouth work the chew until he slowed, stopped, leaned to Fat Mack. “You’ll be getting that private cell next week. The nice one in the new wing. It’s yours.”
Fat Mack nodded, kept his eyes on the guard’s face as he went back to chewing. “And the television,” he said.
Unger paused. “And the television. I’ll get you the television. But you’ll have to keep quiet about that.”
“I’m always quiet. It’s these other fuckers can’t quit running their mouths.”
Unger nodded, chewed. “There’ll be hell to pay if word gets out.”
Fat Mack looked at the guard, grinned the grin that made men look sick around the eyes. He’d practiced that grin in the mirror. He knew that with half his face frozen from the stroke, when he grinned it looked like a dead man coming to life, or was it a live man going dead? Either way, nobody liked to look at his face when it moved.
The guard gave a little laugh. Nervous, faking. “Ah, hell, Mack, I knew we worked a good deal. I got my man, and you’ll get your television and that private cell you want. I’m just saying—”
Fat Mack moved forward in that quick, hard way no one expected. Unger stepped back. Mack gave him that quick smile again. “There’s always hell to pay.”
The Mean Little World
Mike sat in the interrogation room and kept his eyes on his hands. He knew if he looked at the detective, it would just get the man started: You piece of shit, what you looking at. He’d learned back in juvy never to look a guard in the eye; it was just like looking at a dog just waiting for you to make the little motion that would get him running to chase you as far down the road as he thought you should be.
He was a criminal now. Not a kid anymore but a man charged with manslaughter, second degree. It made him sound like something as bad as Jesse. But he was nothing like Jesse. He’d be doing three years instead of the ten he’d thought he’d get, could have gotten worse. Maybe it was his granny’s prayers. Still, there’d be three years of concrete cells, lockdowns, having to watch his back, having to watch his everything around him every minute. But that was all right. In a way he’d always feel free now; at least he’d be a little more free now that Jesse was dead. He blinked, looked at the dry skin around his fingertips, the dirt under his nails. He’d never thought he’d live to see Jesse dead. But it was true. Jesse was dead. Or there’d be no way in hell he’d be sitting here willing to tell about the blue-truck girl. “Katy,” she had said. “My name is Katy. You need to know my name.”
The detective pulled himself a little closer. There was a guard watching him from the corner of the room while another guard was walking two new people in: some chick and a cop, not a city cop. Mike figured him for county. Mike saw the badge; it looked to be a sheriff’s badge. Probably from the county out by the lake where they’d dumped the truck. Yeah, he’d get a right to be here. But Mike couldn’t figure the chick. She was hot in a rough kind of way. Tight jeans, boots. Definitely not a reporter. She was a little, hard-lo
oking woman, something in her face worn out. She looked too young to look so old, a tight body but these big eyes, and curly hair like a kid. She probably looked better on a good day. The guard led her to a chair across the room. She grabbed a notepad and pen from her purse. She gave Mike a glance, not a fuck-you-punk look like everyone else was giving him these days. Maybe she was a reporter. But she didn’t look hungry and nervous, the way reporters did. She glanced over him quickly, but curious, as if he were some creature she’d never seen before. Then she looked to the sheriff guy, who sat beside her, and they talked like they knew each other. Maybe she was undercover.
Mike lowered his head a little, said, “What they doing here?”
“That isn’t your concern, Carter.” The detective spoke like he was so pissed off, Mike could almost feel the smack in his voice. “You just sit there while we get this ready. You sit there and remember every little mile you drove, every little place you saw, every tree, fence, highway sign. Don’t you give me this I-don’t-know shit. You were the driver. You tell us every damn thing you saw the day you killed Katy Connor.”
“I didn’t kill her,” Mike said. “Jesse did it. You know Jesse did it.”
“I’ll let you know when it’s time for you to talk. I want you to just sit there and think about what you did.”
Same as his granny’s words. She always said that when he screwed up and she caught him. It could have been something like breaking into a house and boosting some old lady’s TV. Or it could have been something as simple as drinking the last Coke in the refrigerator without asking.
She was in a nursing home now, had had some kind of breakdown because of him. He was a criminal, just like his daddy. He wondered if what Jesse said about meanness being in the blood was true. Maybe he’d gotten that from his daddy, the same way he’d gotten that soft, round face, pale as an underdone biscuit. Yeah, he was like his daddy. He had made his granny cry those deep, sobbing sounds like everything in her was gonna come out. He stood on her porch, cuffed, with the cops right beside him, and wondered if she could die from crying like that. When she heard the words they charged him with, the murder of Katherine Connor, she just dropped to the floor and made a wailing noise that still sent shivers up his spine.
He stood there looking at his granny, watching the cops help her up from the floor and get her to her favorite chair, as if they knew which was her favorite. He was afraid she might die from crying, and it was then he realized just what he had done when he’d carried that screwdriver to Jesse, not wanting to, but his mind saying the lady was already dead. Jesse had done it. Mike had only been the driver. He told his granny that, but that only made her cry harder, him trying to make some kind of sense of what he had done.
And now they’d offered him a deal. “You’re one lucky fuck,” the detective said. “You’re lucky Katy’s mother wants her daughter’s remains more than she wants you dead.”
He hadn’t thought of the blue-truck lady as having a mother. Her name was Katy. He could still feel the touch of her hand on his arm. I’m sorry, he thought. It was Jesse, he had told the cops. He’d told them that Jesse had a way of making you do things. The detective had just stared at him, eyes fierce, body clenched like he was just waiting for a reason to slam Mike against the wall.
The detective kicked his chair. “You ain’t talking. We brought you in here to tell us where we can find that poor girl you bastards killed.”
“I didn’t do it,” Mike said.
The detective kicked his chair again. “No, you just stood and watched. You knew what he was gonna do to that girl. Why didn’t you just get in your car and drive off, go to the cops? You had your keys!”
“I couldn’t leave,” Mike said. He hadn’t even thought of leaving. “The girl’s truck was parked behind me. There was no way I could get out.”
“You couldn’t go to that farmhouse just on the other side of the trees, could you? No, you couldn’t move your goddamned feet. You had to stand there and watch.”
“I didn’t watch,” Mike said.
“Then you went home to your granny’s house, ate fried chicken. Let that monster sleep in your granny’s house. I guess you don’t give a shit who gets left dead somewhere as long as you can go eat the last of your granny’s fried chicken.”
Mike looked up. “I turned him in. I told what he did to the Land Fall girl.”
“For the money.” The detective sneered. “But you didn’t get the money, did you? Because there was something else you didn’t tell. Like a blue truck out of gas? There was a lot you didn’t tell, but you gave us enough to bust your ass. You and Jesse Hollowfield eating fried chicken at your granny’s house. Yeah, you knew about the Land Fall girl, but there were two things you didn’t know when you called that number. Like your granny, she ain’t as deaf as you think.”
“I know,” Mike said.
The detective poked him in the chest. “And that blue truck you two were so hot to jack and had to dump because the gauge was sitting on empty.” The detective sat back a little, smiled. “That blue truck with the Tennessee plates, it had a tank full of gas. You boys only thought it was empty. You left a truck all tuned up and a tank full of gas just sitting on the side of the road.”
Mike closed his eyes. He didn’t want to see that laughing sneer on the face of the detective. They’d walked away from the truck full of gas. They could have made the pawnshop easy, ahead of time, in that truck. They could have grabbed enough cash, guns, any shit they wanted and had plenty of money for Jesse to get out of town the way he aimed to and for Mike to buy a kitchen full of groceries and maybe fix his car. That was the plan before the blue-truck girl. They’d listened to the engine, and Jesse had said, “She’ll ride all right.” But the blue-truck girl . . . her name was Katy. That lady named Katy, well, she’d still be dead even if they’d made the pawnshop in the blue truck. The detective moved close. Mike felt his breath, could even feel the sneer on his face the same way he could always feel a look from Jesse. “It doesn’t matter,” Mike said. “That lady, she’d still be dead. Jesse never meant to leave her alive.”
The hard little woman stood. “Goddamn it! I’ve heard enough of this! Tell where she is, you little shit!” The room went still as she came at him the way a cat watches a mouse in a corner, nibbling, not even thinking about the big cat that jerks up its head and leaps at the mouse, snapping its neck in one swift move. Her eyes were flashing, and she was coming straight at him. The guard took her arm, and Mike jumped up, his heart pounding while her eyes stayed right on him. The guard pulled her back, and the detective slammed Mike back into his chair. Mike looked at the detective. “Damn, man. Who is she?”
“She wants answers.” The detective spread a map on the table, pointed at a circled spot. “Here’s where you fuckers grabbed Katy Connor.” Mike studied the map, caught the other circle stamped on the tangled lines for roads. “And here’s where you left her truck. You were in the city. You headed north. Now, you look at this and show me exactly where you went.”
“I can’t read maps,” Mike said. “It’s all a tangle to me. I can barely read.”
The detective’s breath started up again, hard and fast. “All right, let’s say I believe your dumb ass. Is it that you’re half blind or just too dumb to read?”
“I can read,” Mike said, thinking most things he could read. But maps, he just got confused by all those lines that ran together.
The detective glanced at the chick, now sitting again across the room. The sheriff, he had his hand on her knee, not soft but firm, like he was making her sit in that chair. The detective knocked the back of Mike’s head, not too hard, but not soft either. “Let’s see if we can stir up any memories in there. You know, like a general sense of direction. Where did you last see Katy Connor alive?”
He remembered how she’d looked walking out of that store, not happy, really, not the way most chicks look when they’d just bought something. “I didn’t want to do it,” Mike said. His voice, it didn’t sound
like him. It sounded like a little boy’s.
The detective kicked his chair. “Where did you last see Katy Connor alive?”
“Up near Whitwell.”
“Near Whitwell, where your granny lives,” the detective said.
“Not that far up. We took the exit right before Whitwell. There’s some little back roads there, nothing much else. It was a good place to hide. The farms out there, nobody grows much out there no more. The school, it’s closed.”
“What school?”
“I don’t know. It’s some brick building. You can tell by looking at it, it was a school sometime.”
“I need names of something. I need route numbers!”
“I never pay attention to the route numbers. It’s all just roads.”
The detective punched his arm again. “You need to think a little harder, you dumb shit. You need to tell me something that was on those roads.”
Mike shook his head, squeezed his eyes shut. He was driving, and Jesse was right on his ass. He thought to try to outrun Jesse, but Jesse would still kill the girl and then come to kill him. So he kept driving. “There was some old power station. It was all fenced in with razor wire. It was closed. Looked like it’d been closed a long time. It was on one of the roads. I remember that. Then we turned west.”
